Artifices of Gold and Shadow
by Marchwriter
Summary: When a 'messenger of the Valar' arrives on a rainy night, Celebrimbor — living quietly in exile — offers him shelter. The consequences of that decision will alter his destiny forever.
1. Chapter 1: Thunder, Lightning, Rain

**Author's Notes**: Written for erlkoenig during the 2019 Slashy Valentine challenge. Many thanks to Maitimiel who betaed this behemoth for me! All errors remaining are mine.

**Story Notes:** On canon: The Second Age is a matter of some complexity and contradiction. I've cherry-picked the pieces with the most potential for conflict.

_"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. _ _When they separate, man is no more."_  
_— Nikola Tesla _

_"The Devil hath power / _ _To assume a pleasing shape."_  
_— Shakespeare, Ham., _

He touched a taper to the spirit lamp. _Whump_, _hiss _. A thrill of flame burst above the jet. It pulsed then steadied: a colorless tongue with a heart of amaranthine heat. Thin warmth spread to either side though nothing would ever quite eliminate the damp. Stooping, he groped through other people's wreckage for pot, mug, and tea leaves.

The bell above his door chimed, silvering the air. A breath of air, rich with oncoming rain, exhaled across the room and sent several pages, loosely gathered under a tome, spinning across the floor.

"Master Enerdhil?"

He was almost getting used to it — the discomfort of a name not his own, shrugging it on like a coat that didn't quite fit. Nothing could conceal his dark Noldorin looks, but in this city, so many struggled with their own private tragedies, they felt no compulsion to inquire after his. They did not blame a man if he styled himself outside the context of his lineage.

The woman at his threshold stood for a moment, blinking her way out of the thickening light outside.

"Can I help you, miss?" he prompted when she remained there, not venturing further in but not quite willing to retreat.

"Are you Enerdhil? The one they call Enerdhil? I was told you had a shop here."

"I am and I do, as you see." He set his pot above the spirit lamp then gathered the fallen pages from the floor, tapped them on the counter to neaten their lines and tucked them more securely under a different tome. "Woodwork. Metalwork. Leatherwork. Engraving. Book-binding. Silver-smithing. Paper-making. Even embroidery, if you like."

She looked about her, taking in the cluttered shelves, tables, countertop. All flat spaces (and most of the vertical ones) were occupied by all manner of things: relics of war and circumstance, the histories of unraveled lives and drowned lands in various states of (dis)repair, treasures salvaged and hauled long leagues, their bearers unable to part with them even when practicality demanded otherwise.

"I was told you have skill in such matters. Even—even things that might not be fixed. I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of coin…"

He cleared a space on the countertop before him. "Let's have it."

She laid a music box of weathered grey wood before him. Filigreed leaves unfurled along its edges and across the lid. One hinge buckled upward, the wood bulging as if it had been rained on.

"This is Doriath craftsmanship," he said. A cold, prickly sweat broke out down his spine and along his ribs as he turned it over in his hands.

"It hasn't sounded since… since we left."

"Yes."

The music box had lost its voice: the merry tune of water bubbling, spinning away under a canopy of unbroken leaves. It hadn't sung since those dark men had come with their dark swords and bright eyes. Ever since they had taken mistress, who it had played for so often, from her bed. They had made her sing a song it could never repeat.

Always, it was like this. He would stitch closed a hole in a gown that belonged to a young woman in love with someone she could not have. He polished tarnish and old anger out of brooches and silver. He swept a dust cloth over a mirror until it glinted with secrets (he did not look; he mistrusted mirrors). He hid in beauty what could never be spoken.

Swallowing hard, he wound the key in the opposite direction gently, feeling the tension go out of it like a sigh. He oiled it and soothed its splintered edges; he straightened the jostled comb, the crooked cylinder. He worked polish over the blackened gold, and slowly, tentatively, it gave up its grief to him.

This time, he turned the key, and a bright, sprightly tune danced through the shop, springing tears to the woman's eyes.

She tried to press a few coins on him, but he refused. She seized his hands instead, her eyes over-bright and fierce. "Thank you. _ Thank you _. We had tried everything…You have a gift, truly."

The back of his neck grew hot. Carefully, he extricated himself. "My family had a knack for the making of things: gems, in particular, but metal and stone as well."

_And for never knowing when to relinquish them. _

He feared, as he always did, that he had given away too much. That somehow this stranger might unearth the truth of his words and his name in his eyes. Instead, her face softened with sympathy.

"They are not with you? Your family?" She had taken note of nothing more in his words than its careful phrasing in the past.

"No."

After he bowed her out of his shop, he threw the bolt on the door and snuffed the light in the window. His fingers trembled, the grief of the little music box echoing in him like a bruise.

The shop, low and rectangular and familiar, enfolded him in its silence and the company of other people's things. Everything in the shop belonged to someone else. Everything but a small chest in the corner. Its presence crouched like an animal lying in wait, all iron hasps and dark rosewood. He had carried it longer than anything else — even when practicality demanded otherwise. The parts not taken up with stacks of books and the folds of a half-mended tapestry were covered in inches-thick dust.

The stench of scorching metal hit his nostrils, spurring him gratefully across the room. He snatched the pot off the flame. The bottom was discolored — not for the first time — with a blackened ring.

With a sigh Celebrimbor fetched up a bucket and stepped out of the ghosts of overheated metal and ancient regret and went to draw more water from the well.

* * *

A fortnight later, he braved the wet misery of the evening and slogged uphill towards the Great Square and the House that sat above it. The journey was one he made as often as he was summoned — the summoner was not one a man refused if he possessed any wisdom.

Along the boulevard the holly trees were neatly pruned and evenly spaced, unlike the wild, blowsy tangle down by the city walls where he dwelt. Lamps hung from their limbs, silver and blue. In fair weather or foul, they burned clear without smoke or need of trimming (a quiet commission he had undertaken some years earlier). They never failed — yet tonight, the light behind their glass housing flickered: capricious as marsh lights.

As he reached the top of the hill, within sight of the Lord's House, he looked back, the city of Ost-in-Edhil beneath him, glimmering like a white gem in the rain. No ring of mountains encircled it. No enchanted girdle kept out the wicked or unwanted. Only high walls and an ever-open Gate, more ornament than armament. For the first time, the Elves lived without fear of some hidden figure in the dark North. No more fortresses. No more hiding.

The only shadows were of their own making.

Chin buried in his collar, he waded across the courtyard and up the steps into the shadow of the portico.

The light of a silver lamp slashed across his face.

"Halt and be recognized!"

Celebrimbor threw up a hand to shield his smarting eyes, but even squinting through the glare, he discerned the face of the young sentry behind it. "While I applaud your enthusiasm and dedication to duty, Erestor, at least have the decency to not blind me with my own lamp, will you?"

The sentry sheepishly lowered his arm, but the one behind him stood forward. Older, lampless, a Sinda man by his look, he ran an eye over Celebrimbor up and down, more searching than any lamp.

"Forgive our caution… sir…" he said, sounding neither as apologetic nor deferential as his words. "We have had reports of strangers at the gate."

"As you can clearly see, I am no stranger," Celebrimbor said, stepping hard on his impatience. Water dredged from his shoulders and dripped from his hair down the back of his collar. "Indeed, I am expected."

"He is, Captain," Erestor chimed. "She asked me to keep an eye out."

Celebrimbor cast him a grateful look even as his elder shot him a baleful one.

"You speak out of turn, lad. Unless you wish to exchange your lamp for a shovel, hold your tongue." He returned his gaze to Celebrimbor, and though the ire behind it did not lessen, he was too well-schooled to do more than tug the door open and stand to one side.

"Your vigilance does you credit," Celebrimbor said as he passed. "I shall remember it."

He stepped into the hall and shrugged out of his dripping cloak.

"_Tyenya_!"

Still nettled by his reception, he missed the blur of motion from the other end of the hall until too late. The pale bolt tangled in her overlong nightgown and socked him solidly in the belt buckle.

He grunted, almost overborne, but gamely righted himself and the small figure whose bright, untarnished eyes, the color of lapis lazuli, gazed up at him from a pillow-tangle of gold and silver hair. "What did you bring me?"

"Well, I like that," he said, crossing his arms with indignation only partly feigned (she had come close to damaging more sensitive parts than his belt buckle with her head). "No 'hail and well met, uncle.' Merely a demand for payment, is it, milady?"

The young girl looked properly mortified at once, but he waved aside her apologies and, crouching to her eye level, chucked her gently under the chin. "You don't think I'd visit and bring naught for you, do you? But, alas, I seem to have misplaced it."

He made a show of fumbling through his cloak and pockets while she, familiar with this ritual, rocked on the balls of her bare feet. With a deft flick of his wrist, he produced between two fingers as if from the air a glimpse of the proffered treasure, vanished it, and, leaning forward, gave her left ear a playful tug and dropped it into her waiting palm.

Her small fingers curled around the broach. Despite the hall lamps, too dim to strike its facets, its colors spilled across her face: the rich copper of beech trees in autumn…became dove-like curls of smoke…which gave rise to green ferns flourishing and broadening to the brilliance of a summer sun...before sinking, twilit, into the deepest of lilacs.

"Oh, Uncle, it's beautiful!" And in its wash, every quality of hers — and there were many both hard and bright — magnified in all their brilliance.

He smiled his first and truest smile of the day. "That is an opal you know. You may thank our friend, Narvi, for that gift. He—"

"_Celebrían_!"

Both of them startled, guiltily, and Celebrimbor unbent his knees.

The Lord of Eregion strode down the hall towards them, eying his progeny sternly. "You are to be asleep."

"I'm not _tired_, Adar."

Her father lifted a single, silver brow and waited, patient as the Ages.

Celebrían deflated, but the look she shot Celebrimbor was full of sly mischief as she slipped the bauble down her nightshirt. _Oh, child, when come to womanhood, you will cause more men than your father no end of grief _, Celebrimbor thought fondly.

He returned her conspiratorial wink even as he made obeisance to her father.

Though given over more to politics these days than polearms, Celeborn still resembled the warrior he had once been: confidant of Melian the Maia, bannerman to Thingol Singollo (Celebrimbor had only ever glimpsed the Woodland King on the edge of his halls, once and from a distance, and was glad he had come no closer). The Lord of Eregion was no less imposing, and up close he was a force to be reckoned with.

"Forgive the untimely summons, Telperinquar " Celeborn said, sounding much more sincere than his door warden as he nudged his wayward child in the direction of the family wing.

Hearing his true name in the mouth of a Sinda man never ceased to unsettle Celebrimbor. Like Thingol of old, Celeborn bore little love for outsiders, even less for the kin of those who had sacked the realm of Doriath and driven him and his lady-wife into the wilds. Unlike his former liege or the men who followed him, Celeborn did not permit his dislike to disadvantage him. A quality Celebrimbor rather admired, despite himself.

It was also not the only thing of Celeborn's he admired.

Aware that his boots and cloak hem were collecting a not-insignificant and rather unbecoming puddle beneath him, he dipped his head again. "I wait upon your pleasure, as always, my lord."

"I only wish it were," came the oblique reply as the Lord of Eregion led the way down the corridor.

* * *

Despite the chill of rain and Celeborn's foreboding, Celebrimbor's heart quickened in anticipation as they entered the audience hall: a long rectangular room hung with more silver lamps. They shone across the polished floor despite the thick penumbra of the ceiling.

At the top of the dais sat a woman, tall even sitting, with a much more ordered fall of hair than her daughter's tumbling down past her shoulders. The tresses glimmered, soft as bronze, tensile as copper. He had crafted the lamps for this very hall with the only thought in his mind of how that hair needed but a finger-caress of light (candlelight, unbound) to cull forth the ghosts of Laurelin and Teleperion anew. The fairness of Celebrían came to its full fruition in her mother. Stubbornness softened by wisdom, both annealed in a beauty that was hard to look at for long.

She rose and walked down the wide steps, sleek and gold where her husband was tall and silver. She presented a slender hand, the one not reserved for her husband's token. He took it, cradled it in both of his, carefully, the way he handled his burners when he had not waited for the glass to cool enough. His callouses caught against the smoothness of her unmarked palm, and a tingle raced up his forearms to his scalp and all down the length of his back that had little to do with rain and nothing at all with a chill. He lifted her knuckles towards his lips, careful not to let them touch. He dared not so much as exhale lest the suddenly-fitful stutter of his breath betray him in such close quarters.

"You drag me away from my work and out into a wild night that almost makes me prefer dragon-fire. Now what, may I ask, is so urgent, Alatáriel?" He inquired over her wrist, impertinent, more petrified than daring (petrified that she might descry his mind — with those uncanny eyes of hers — it nearly unmanned him there). So he looked at nothing but her eyes as he straightened and smiled and released her.

"You have been too long away, my friend," said the Lady, returning his smile. "I would that our meeting was a merrier one. We have need of your counsel."

But it was Celeborn who answered his question (the faintest stiffening of his shoulders all that he would ever give away at their familiarity). "More than you have braved the storm this night. We have a guest."

Celebrimbor looked about him. There were not three of them in the hall but four.

The fourth sat on the second lowest of the steps, a shadowed figure wrapped up and hooded, so still and closely resembling the stone that Celebrimbor had missed him entirely.

In spite of the foul weather, not a single droplet of rainwater wetted those humbly-clad shoulders. The boots, resting firmly on the stone floor, were untarnished by mud and dyed a vibrant shade of scarlet such as Celebrimbor had only ever glimpsed on traders out of the Far East. But nothing else of his person (if indeed a 'he' — it was hard to discern from the shadows of that great hood).

"Greetings." The voice was light, musical, neither wholly male nor female, giving as little away of the speaker as the ragged garb. "Forgive me if I do not rise. I fear my journey has made me terribly weary. I've come a long way. Enerdhil… is it?"

"It is."

"Annatar is my name. I am told that you have a gift…Enerdhil."

"I have been told so." Sharp heat crept up into Celebrimbor's face. He did not like the look of this stranger and even less the look cast at him, all owlish and inquisitive. "A lofty name for a wilding come out of the rain. Annatar. Lord of Gifts?"

"What are names but the things we use to comfortably clothe ourselves to others." Annatar threw back his (for more and more male in voice and features had he become) hood and shrugged out of the burlap in one, smooth motion, holding it out on the tips of his fingers. "As for gifts: this is the least of them."

Bemused, Celebrimbor took it.

Though it had seemed like burlap, it was heavier than expected, smoother, and utterly dry. There were no needle pricks or stitches or anything that betrayed it as a garment of any kind. It was one, long, unbroken sweep of cloth that glimmered as if some benevolent spider had woven a vast web that caught and repelled rainwater.

And then, faintly at first, like a bell from far off, he heard music. Music such as he had never heard sung in many fair and unearthly voices that raised the tiny hairs on the nape of his neck even as they broke his heart. For they were far away. Farther than any ship might sail.

He almost sank to his knees under the weight of such music. Only Celeborn's arm under his shoulder spared him an ungainly sprawl across the flagstones.

Celebrimbor let fall the cloak and stared, unabashedly open-mouthed, at the small man, his hands folded demurely before him. For all that he appeared of elven-kind: neither young nor old in the ageless way of the Eldar, he seemed more like a piece of unpolished crystal, opaque and cloudy and unremarkable, but polish out the rough and facets of variegated color might spring from its surface, full-revealed.

"You…You come of the Valar?"

Annatar smiled. "Your liege-lady wished to put my claim to the test. I blame her not. Indeed, I met with even less welcome in lands further west and south. Looking as I do, I should be grateful they did not send the dogs after me." He laughed self-deprecatingly.

"Why are you here?" asked Celeborn, who shifted closer to his lady.

"The Valar would take counsel for the governance of Middle-earth. If there are still those dwelling here who might heed such."

Celeborn sniffed. "When last I beheld them, the Valar cared less for listening to counsel than exerting their will and claiming it right."

Annatar nodded. "Admittedly, mistakes were made. Indeed, even by those of the Highest Order, who might be thought beyond reproach. We have learned from those errs of judgment. Not by might and glory shall the Eldar be guarded. Nor through dwimmercraft and majesty are the greatest battles won. That you yourselves have proven with valor and steel alone. Even when we would not. They should have done more. And only now are they giving us leave to amend what we can. It may seem too little and far too late by your estimation, but I would beg for the chance to prove myself to you, if you would allow it."

The Lady listened to this with her head tipped to one side, her expression unreadable even to Celebrimbor who marked her shifts well. "Your words seem fair. Yet we were warned against you, Annatar. Despite his defeat, Morgoth left his shadow on the world, and not all of his servants have gone into the dark with him."

Annatar bowed, his expression one almost of pity had it been directed at any lesser a personage than the Lady of Eregion. "My lady. Aulë ever named you highest in his praises. Your wisdom and beauty in equal measure — I am glad to see he was not mistaken. Yet I would implore you not to mistake suspicion for wisdom or allow an excess of caution to forbid friendship. I can guess where such warnings may have come from. But Gil-galad is far, and Lindon's concerns are not Eregion's. Let trade and taxes be a king's affair! The governing of a city he ought to leave in hands more capable and more knowing of their people's best interests."

Ah, here is a keen and subtle mind. The Lady was not one to subject herself to the rule of another, and her discontent with Gil-galad, though known to few, was known. Despite himself, Celebrimbor felt for their strange visitor. He knew what it was to weather suspicion undeserved and hostility that he could not answer with anything other than words.

"My Lady, if you will permit me," he said in an undertone. "Others with less to recommend them have you permitted in your company against all counsel. Even if this Annatar is not who he claims to be, what harm is there in granting him leave to prove it? If he is found lacking or dissembling, we may dismiss him."

She looked at him in that way she had that made him feel as if she were burrowing into the very marrow of his bones. Then, obliquely, her gaze shifted away from him, peering at the far wall as if through space and time, lingering on some memory long past — or some future as yet un-glimpsed. "Even though we swore no oath, still we are ensnared, the paths laid before our feet ere we set out from our door. Now I understand why he did as he did though he knew the cost."

Celebrimbor did not understand this, but he pressed on, hoping to shake off this eerie woolgathering. "The power of Morgoth is, as you say, broken but not undone. No clearer is that seen than in the continued division between us. To that end, perhaps, we should not dismiss offered help out of hand — or stubbornness. You summoned me here for honest counsel and that is mine, if you would have it."

Celeborn touched his wife's arm. As if his fingers recalled her to herself, she stirred and laid her own over his. "What then do you suggest?"

"Leave him in my charge. I shall look after him and see that no harm comes of it." When she hesitated, Celebrimbor added. "Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?"

"It is not you I doubt."

She said nothing more as Celebrimbor escorted his newfound charge from the hall.

* * *

The rain had ceased by the time they returned to Celebrimbor's shop down on the lower street.

Annatar took in the cramped and, by now, rather dank room silently. The piles of books and discarded furniture. The cobwebs, the cot in the corner with its neatly folded blanket.

"It's—" He ran a finger over the dark wood of the chest, gathering up a layer of dust on his forefinger, "—charming."

"I have everything I need." Celebrimbor sifted through his few billets of wood beside the hearth. "And if it is little to your liking, you may sleep outside."

"I rather thought you dwelt in the House with your kinswoman."

"I am not a member of the household."

"No?" Annatar tilted his head, giving him that queer, uncanny look again. "Strange."

Celebrimbor straightened abruptly, frowning. "How did you know she was my kinswoman?"

"Let us dispense with the subterfuge, shall we?" Annatar passed his hand over the stub of a candle stuck upright on the worktable. The wick sputtered and flared to sudden life, dappling shadows across the underside of his face. "I know your name, and it is not Enerdhil. I must admit I would not have expected to find a descendant of Fëanor hiding himself away on a street shy of a rookery in the humble guise of a tinker."

"No more than I would have expected to find a servant of the Valar in the guise of alms guest," Celebrimbor blustered, resenting the hint of scorn in 'tinker.' "What makes you think I am hiding?"

Annatar cast him a look that required no answer to embellish it. "You do not wish to be dunned with the black brush that plagued your kin."

"Not an unreasonable fear," Celebrimbor said, not desiring to gainsay a Maia, too much, but unwilling to agree wholeheartedly. "My family did not enough harm to the world, and many of those who dwell here remember the ruin of Doriath, the sack of Sirion. To say nothing of my father's deeds in Nargothrond—" But he stopped there. He had no desire to invoke the old ghost of his father before this stranger.

"Deeds for which you are blameless."

"Not in all eyes." Celebrimbor stooped to the hearth again, stacking the drier billets in the cold hearth. He laid them with care, arranged and ordered, refusing to turn towards his guest who remained silent for a little.

"So, because of the ill judgment of a few, you would deprive yourself of greatness."

"Those that rise to greatness tend to fall a long, dark way. I am content."

"I do not believe you. You cannot tell me you are content with this…this sad little hovel. Mending the wounds of others because you fear to look too closely at your own."

"I begin to doubt my own wisdom," Celebrimbor muttered, almost to himself. "Mayhap I should have let the Lady have her way and expel you. Preferably from the height of the city walls."

Annatar held up his hands with a laugh. "Peace! Peace! For all your demurring, you possess a fire worthy of Fëanor. I only mean to help."

"Then you might lend a hand with the fire. One of us, at least, is cold and wet."

Annatar tilted his head as if considering this. "It _is _cold in here."

The wood that had been frustrating all of Celebrimbor's efforts began to smoke and then burst with a flourish of auburn sparks into a gout of flame. Surprised, he dropped the log in the grate and piled on the kindling to catch and cradle the flame.

As heat spread over him with a warm glow, the room contracted on itself. For a moment, and a moment only, he glimpsed in the flat and turning flames, unfurling like a vision or a dream of a vision, a vast flame-city of Ost-in-Edhil. Near the top of the hill, close to the holly trees (each leaf and berry orangered in shades of flame), sat a house to rival the Hall of the Lord and Lady. It gleamed like a jewel under a radiant sun, the flank of the High Road turning beyond its walls. Within, though he could not see it, he could feel a warmth, a pulsing that had nothing to do with the gathering fire. It was not just a house, but a Home. A family. A purpose of his own. Something more than a meagre hovel on the outskirts of the city, burning his chair legs for warmth.

His own.

His fingertips of their own accord and despite wisdom stretched out towards the flames as if to graze those high, white walls. His heart swelled.

The vision fluttered, faded and broke apart like rain smearing down a window pane. A rush of acrid smoke hit his face, and he staggered back, coughing. He blinked away the strange turn, shaken, sweating with nerves and desire all at once.

Annatar was watching him, a small, little smile curving his lips.

"Show off," Celebrimbor muttered, yet he could not entirely conceal his wonder and bustled to set the kettle on, to fish out a cup or two that did not have chips or a layer of dust in them. "I don't suppose you take tea?"

"I do, in fact. With two sugars, if there's any to be had. I feel cold and hunger and weariness as you do. Even heartbreak," Annatar said, mildly affronted. "I wear the flesh of the Eldar, after all, and living in Arda Marred, I am subject to its rules and laws. However inconvenient or uncomfortable I find it."

"I meant no offense," Celebrimbor said, chastened, and set a passably clean mug before his guest. "You are the first of your kind I have encountered."

Annatar seated himself at the worktable and folded his long hands before him. "You have much to learn, _Telperinquar_."

"And you are the one to teach me?"

Annatar helped himself to a spoonful of sugar, his easy smile renewed. "Yes. I am just the one."

**Chapter Notes: **

_Tyenya_ \- a term of endearment meaning 'dear kinsman.'

Technically Galadriel and Celebrimbor are rather distant kinsmen - but Celebrian deliberately calls him 'uncle' to denote a closer claim of kinship.

The first and only mention of Celebrimbor's attraction to Galadriel occurs in Unfinished Tales "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn."


	2. Chapter 2: Amber, Crystal, Beaded Jet

Two yéni swept by since the night of their first circling in the hall, their tentative meeting of minds in the lambent light of a fire, but it was far from their last. Though their engagements had acquired a warmth their earlier encounters had lacked, Celebrimbor could not even now resist questioning his friend's wisdom.

"If you would rather not try it, I understand."

"It is not that I would not try it, but it seems a rather large risk for little gain."

"Ridding yourself of that pitiful hovel was a risk. Commissioning Narvi's folk for the building of this House, that was a risk. Forsaking that unfitting name for your own… well, that was a success even I cannot claim full credit for."

"You know what I mean."

"I think you fear yourself unequal to the task."

"Have I ever proved unequal to any task you set me?"

Annatar raised his head from his long-accustomed place in the moat of their worktable. "Never."

Easing his aching back, Celebrimbor walked the length of the room to the windows spanning the eastern wall. Sunlight warmed the marble floors beneath his feet and even the deepest recesses overhead. Beyond the panes stretched a view of the gardens and fountains in crooked spokes as they wound their way even to the city wall. The whole, lean length of the city sprawled beneath him like a careless lover across a bed. Around him, Celebrimbor could feel the hum of the House lifting itself. His small and eccentric circle had swelled to a host of men and women (and even a few of Durin's folk) that others were already naming the "Gwaith-i-Mírdain" — derelicts of war left purposeless in peacetime; the tragedy-stricken sifting through pieces of their lives for anything salvageable; children born in the summer of the Second Age who knew nothing of strife, bored with the vocations and strictures of their parents… They all came to him, and none cared a whit that the get of a kinslayer was, at least nominally, their chief.

"Rings are best for the task," Annatar said as if continuing a debate they had had. "Less prone to loss or thieves. They may be disguised simply with a glamour. In the early days of course one would simply craft a gem or brooch and lock the essence of—"

"I am familiar," Celebrimbor said, arching a brow at his friend's pedantry.

"Quite so," Annatar agreed. "Even thus did your grandsire pull the light of the Two Trees into the Silmarils."

"That art has long been lost, even to my people," Celebrimbor insisted.

Annatar laid a finger against his nose, conspiratorially. "Lost only means 'misplaced.' Not forgotten. Unlike my brethren who prefer not to learn more than is good for them, I have looked in many corners of this earth and spoken with many of all different planes and kinds. And some there are, who once numbered among Fëanor's people, with such knowledge that they were willing to impart — to those willing to seek them out."

"'Fëanor's people,'" Celebrimbor repeated, rather startled by the revelation. "Then… have they come forth? From Mandos Halls?"

He told himself he did not care what the answer was. In every outward way, in every way that mattered, the man Curufin had been dead to him long before Dior of Doriath had struck the fatal blow.

But in reflective moments — few and far between as they generally were — came the father who had given him life, a name, a purpose to go with it. Hands, rough with crafting and not too bloodied yet, closed his small fingers around the heavy smith's hammer, that low whisper a flash in the dark. The feeling kindled in Celebrimbor's mind long after he failed to recall the precise words.

"That," Annatar said with extraordinary gentleness. "I do not know. Mine was the province of Aulë."

The sympathy in his face was unbearable — almost more so than the understanding. Celebrimbor dropped his gaze back to the plans before him, but the cream of the vellum glowed too bright for him to see the inked designs in Annatar's careful, orderly hand.

"There is power to be forged out of pain, Celebrimbor," Annatar insisted in a voice quiet and irrevocable as thunder. He had said as much before, on other matters than the making of rings. "Instead of hiding such things in gems and music boxes, you might redirect them. Harness them. Make something mightier from them. It will make you ever more powerful, more the master of your own fate."

Celebrimbor glanced at the chest, its iron hasps gone black with age. It was still covered in dust, merely shifted from one corner to another.

Annatar gripped his shoulder, refused to release his eyes or let him hide. "I will be your guide. I will not let you fall."

"I trust you."

And it was that simple truth that made him want to try. Whatever the risk, if Annatar asked it of him, he could not refuse.

Annatar's smile was bright and filled all his face. Canting his head in that uncanny way he had — he could sense a shift in thought from across the room — he asked. "What now has you in so reflective a mood, my friend?"

Celebrimbor shook his head. "We're going to need gold, for one thing."

* * *

The kiln yawned open, releasing a furnace-blast of heat that stroked his skin and made the air swim with its vibration.

Sweating, though stripped to the waist, Celebrimbor took a pair of tongs from the worktable and carefully maneuvered the glowing clay to the wooden surface of the table. It was the red of blood. Wax ran through the channels like tears as the mold fell away. Moving swiftly lest it cool too soon, he took up the crucible with its precious contents. Neither iron nor wood had he used for this purpose. Not one ounce of lesser metal and a few drops of something that wasn't metal at all.

The gold for tonight's endeavor had been dearly bought for the Lady had refused his proposal to venture beyond the city walls. The metal quarries within reach of Ost-in-Edhil were exhausted, the Dwarves unwilling to share what they considered their sole province. Even prevailing upon his friendship with Narvi did not move them one jot.

The Lady, in her infinite wisdom, would not raise their hackles even for the sake of defense of their people. What they might do with those metals if they could. He did not press it, at first. Until Annatar voiced another way: a path high up in the fells, unknown to either the Lady or the Dwarves. An ancient and forgotten place where they might procure some little material for their task.

The barrows were overgrown, clotted with weeds, and they toiled long hours to shift the stones and reveal what lay beneath. The bones still retained their shrunken stature, the weight of mail and cuirass and hatchet. The very weapons that may have cut Thingol down as the murderers fled with their treasure. The greatest of it they had not kept, and few enough of their host had made it even thus far. None returned to their homeland.

What ill befell them upon the road, not even Annatar could say, but long after food and hope were exhausted, they carried their treasures with them, and those treasures remained there still, the like of which was gone from the world now, buried beneath foundered lands and sunken seas.

Only these remained.

What need had the dead of such anyway, he told himself as he gathered up the graveyard gold, and even if they did, they were thieves and murderers themselves. They had no right to what they held in their fleshless fingers.

He tipped the crucible against the clay.

Close at his side, Annatar murmured words of power and of melding, of emerging and shaping, of tempering and strengthening. Sometimes, words he did not understand. They flitted in and out of his awareness, meaningless sound full of purpose, thrumming in him and through him.

Once the mold cooled, he took up his workman's hammer and tapped its edges, carefully, gingerly. Any error now in this moment and all their work would be for naught. With every tentative stroke, he conjured as Annatar had instructed him.

He thought of his family. Their willfulness and their pride. Their anger, if thwarted. The swearing of oaths, of vengeance, of pursuit against all who would gainsay them. He thought of that last night, in Nargothrond, after Finrod and his ten had been seduced to their deaths. Of the expression on his father's face. Of the screaming and fire that came afterward to Nargothrond and spared none.

He remembered when first he had laid eyes on the Lady, in Sirion, tall and slender and worn with travel, her legs bare against the sand. He had loved her even then, and his heart ached as she chose Celeborn of the Trees. Though the ache was a softer one now.

More potent was the presence of the man behind him.

In this once-stranger he had found a worthy mentor and friend when he had never needed one more, and over the years, his gratitude had blossomed fulsomely at finding a mind that allied so closely with his own. Even if it hadn't, Annatar's potent presence…his ready laugh…his insistence on excavating Celebrimbor's room and ordering it to his satisfaction…the furrow of his brow over a particularly thorny problem that even his prowess could not unravel (yet) — for, as he had explained, his power was not infinite…all of it enchanted Celebrimbor as only one other had before.

It was all too easy for Celebrimbor to imagine him one of the Eldar — if particularly learned and (more than) particularly comely.

And that — that would not do.

He was not so fickle (he hoped) or so foolish (he prayed) that he would exchange one unattainable desire for an equally unattainable one.

For Annatar was unattainable.

What did a Maia know of such things as desire? What need had he for comfort, for validation? A form of flesh and bone he might have, but surely such earthly concerns were beneath one such as he.

The hammer tapped. Flakes of clay drifted to the table like the blackened edges of a wound, picking the imperfections away.

A runnel of sweat teased down his lower ribs, Annatar's low voice an anchoring presence, guiding and steadying. He felt something go out of him or pass through him, draining the strength from his legs. The hammer rattled against the table. He sagged, propped up only by the table edge against his belly and Annatar's presence at his back. He felt drained, sore, as if he'd run leagues without water or rest.

Annatar lifted the little circlet in an uncovered hand despite the heat still radiating from it and inspected it in the light of the lamps. The lamps at that moment burned red as coal-fire, crowning Annatar's pale head with a fiery radiance that absorbed all the other light in the room.

Celebrimbor held himself immobile, afraid to break this moment. His heart was throbbing, hard and low against his ribs. He was not unfamiliar with such feeling. In the desperate days after Nargothrond fell, when the only things that held a man together were his desire to survive and to feel, he had succumbed now and again to fierce passions with refugees as lost as he. They dwindled to ash when the fire passed, but he remembered their taste, the scorch of it. It had been a long time since he had allowed himself such utter disarray.

Adjudging, Annatar turned the ring, beautiful in its roughness, in his fingers. When he turned to Celebrimbor, all the light in the room flew to the centers of those remarkable eyes, a spark that warmed and comforted even as it burned.

"Now for a jewel worthy of the master of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain," Annatar whispered.

* * *

Flushed with their triumph, they retreated from the sweltering workroom, up the long, spiraling flight of stairs that opened from the astronomers' tower to the roof where the wind slipped over the stones.

It was a clear night and full of stars, wonderfully sweet and cool after the blaze of kiln and crafting.

Annatar eased down beside him with a soft groan and poured each of them a dram from the bottle in his hand. A fine fig wine from their not inconsiderable cellars.

"To success!"

"To our next task: employing you a decent vintner who will spare you a bout of blindness drinking this swill!" Annatar laughed.

Celebrimbor leaned back against a bench and tilted his head heavenward. The expanse of night sky stretched above him, long and low, so close, he felt almost that he could reach up and cup those stars in his hands. He raised his hand, reflectively, examining the band that encircled his forefinger. The ruby, red as furnace fire, glowed, fierce in its unfinished state. There were imperfections, of course, but they could be filed and smoothed away.

"I could not have done so without you." He was feeling overbold already. The low warmth of drink in his belly, the ring on his finger made him the more eager to declare himself and have done with these half shadows between them. He stroked a hand over the tresses spilling over Annatar's shoulder.

Under his touch that Noldorin mane paled silver under starlight with a gleam of gold, and the collarbone beneath his splayed fingers curved outward in a swell that a moment before had been a flat plain. Fingers alighted on Celebrimbor's cheek, slender and shapely. They stilled him for the very familiarity of them. Familiarity that he had lifted and smoothed and dared not kiss. The eyes that gazed back into his were undeniably woman-shaped and the same, sharp and depthless blue.

"Are you sure this is not what you truly desire?"

Celebrimbor recoiled as if the touch of that white hand had doused him in icewater. "What dwimmercraft is this?"

Alatáriel gazed back at him. But her eyes were all hollows. As if her fair form were no more than a sheaf of gold-plating stretched over latten. "I wished to be certain you were not thinking of another. She haunts you still." said Annatar's voice. "Even after all this time. Even after… I see it in your eyes. I hate that it eats at you so. That she would rather spread her smooth, white thighs for a country squire of the deep woods than for you."

A provocative splay of the knees had Celebrimbor on his feet, heat rolling the length of his back. "Stop. Why are you saying this?"

"Because you will not let her go. You do not see clearly in this. How she belittles you. How she scorns your brilliance. She would take your talents for her own purposes and leave you wanting."

"She has been a great friend to me."

"So long as you serve her purpose. How often of late has she scorned your counsel? Belittled your successes? Refused you aid though you had good reason to ask?"

Too often, a voice whispered.

"If she had had her way, we would yet be laboring with brass and cabochons."

"I know." The gold upon his hand glittered, and he squeezed his fist closed, forcing aside his misgiving.

Annatar laid a hand over his. "I am sorry, my friend. You know I want only for your happiness. You must free yourself of her, cut her out of your heart like a flaw in a gemstone. So does fire purify a forest and make it grow thicker and stronger in the aftermath. A bone mends stronger in the broken place. A wound debrided heals instead of festering. Yes, it hurts. Pain is the price of greatness. It must be faced. It cannot be avoided or ignored. But I will not be balm for it." He took his hand away, leaving Celebrimbor's the colder for it.

"I have set my feelings for her aside."

"Have you?"

"Yes."

"Show me."

This time the fingers that clutched at him bore a man's thickness and a man's hunger, urging him forward though Celebrimbor needed none. Annatar's mouth tasted of wine, mellow and sweet. There was no remoteness there that Celebrimbor had feared, but the hunger of a man made ravenous by deprivation: all heat and languor, the spark of a tongue against his lips, the sweet rake of teeth down the line of his throat.

Though a dark seed niggled at the back of his mind, Celebrimbor found himself thrusting it away under the onslaught of Annatar's consuming kiss and counted himself blessed. In casting aside a flawed jewel, he had netted a star instead.

Overhead, unremarked by either of them, red Borgil burned low in the western sky, a watchful eye on the edge of the horizon.

**Chapter Notes **

_A note on ring-making in this story_: The Noldor have access to techniques and skill with metallurgy that I could only find the briefest and most secretive of accounts on. The secret lies somewhere under the waves.


	3. Chapter 3: Man, Fool, Beast

The liveried fellow who had brought him the message led him into a small, well-kept parlor off the main hall of the Lord's House. He studied the elegant array: the table beside the window set for two, the understated Beleriand china and teapot (rescued from Doriath? He wondered. One of the cups was chipped).

_Beware a woman's wiles_, he thought, though never before had such thoughts crossed his mind. Certainly never regarding her.

The Lady of Eregion herself was standing at the window, silhouetted against the casement and gazing down on the cloistered gardens below. Her face in profile (still beautiful, despite everything) had a washed out color to it. He sensed a restlessness in her stillness. Yet he would not be the first to break the silence and waited, upright as a soldier, hands tucked into the small of his back.

She did not turn, and the silence, spiraling, set his teeth on edge.

"To what do I owe the summons?" he asked lightly, but she cocked her head as if she'd detected the thread of impatience beneath it.

"An invitation between friends is not a summons." She glanced at him from under her lids with reproach.

"Are we yet friends?"

Things had not stood easily between them for some time — since that rainy night in the Hall, truth be told — though he could not say with certainty whence the chill had come. His craft took him ever more often afield and kept him to his workroom when he was at home. He seldom came to the Hall, refused the so-called "invitations" if they came, until they dwindled and finally ceased altogether. On the occasions he attended the Lord's Council, their exchanges were ever briefer, more polite. He sensed a coldness in her that he could not account for and returned it with a chill to match.

Yet the summons today had been delivered formally (the pompous messenger all but daring refusal in his immaculate cloak and rigid manner).

She surveyed him in silence, took him in whole from crown to boots. He had spared no expense for the audience. No longer did he clothe himself in common workman's drab. His hair lay washed and gleaming about his shoulders (for once not reeking of hot metal and coal). The surcoat, stitched with the silver emblem of the House of the Mírdain, accentuated the breadth of his shoulders and the strong angle of his throat, one of the few gifts he had inherited from his father. Snowy linen and stiff brocade, even a pair of richly tooled boots he had purchased from a Númenorean tradesman at no little expense. They were his weapons of choice — though he had not come armed for combat. Only a leaf-bladed dagger hung from his belt, bound with golden wire and a black opal set in the pommel. Under her gaze, he did not shift though, inwardly, he squirmed under such prolonged perusal as if somehow she could see beneath his very skin. (The passion marks hidden by his hair, the rake of nails left across his shoulders).

"You do not look well," she said.

"I have been working."

"Celebrían misses you."

At that, he softened a little. Pulling out one of the spindly-legged chairs, he eased himself into it and helped himself to one of the apples heaped in a bowl there. "She is a woman grown now. She should be seeking more suitable attentions than those of an old tinker."

"Is that what you think you are?" She asked though she did not seem to expect an answer. "I have ever been your friend. I must speak as I must at Council, Telperinquar It is upon us to govern wisely. And to not let others speak for us."

_Ah, there it is. _

"You have misliked him since he arrived. Why I cannot fathom, and you will not explain. He has never done anything but treat you with courtesy, and you cast it back in his face as if it were bile. Why do you not trust him? What reason has he ever given you?"

"I fear he has too great an influence on you."

"Greater than your own, you mean?"

"You are in thrall to him."

"I think you fear he brings too much change in his wake. For too long have we bent the knee to Gil-galad and the concerns of Lindon. Our king has long since ceased to care for the world beyond his gilded walls. Yet ever more we obey his policies to our detriment."

"He is our king. We owe him our fealty." But the words were pale, without her usual fire. "Annatar desires change for his own sake and his own glory. He has that luxury. I do not."

"You do not believe that. That old Finwëian pride stirs still. You forget. I know you, Alatáriel." He plucked one of the apples from the bowl and set his dagger to it. The lush, scarlet skin, split at the kiss of steel, and a few drops bled on his fingers and dappled the silver fist on his surcoat. He slipped the morsel in his mouth, chewed, slow, deliberate.

_She would rather spread her smooth, white thighs for a country squire of the deep woods than for you. _

"Or is it, perhaps, that you are jealous? That I no longer look to your table for…scraps?"

"You speak out of turn, Curufinion." And for the first time, he heard the steel beneath the silver of her voice, and her eyes glittered like adamant in a face of marble. "You are no stranger to the desire for loyalty, I am told. There are whispers that those among your following swear oaths to you."

"I ask for no oath, Lady. I hope you know me better than that," he said, cold. "But if some of my friends desire to seal their dedication to the craft with solemn words — surely that is no crime?"

"Ever your actions are couched in fair seeming reason. So, too, did you father speak once."

A hot pulse of anger rushed through him, crown to heels, like the blast of an open kiln, radiating in his skin. Sweating with it. "I am not my father. Though if I prove Curufin's son in truth, perhaps, it would be wiser, Lady, to speak more softly to me. Pride did not avail Beren or Dior… or your own brother, for that matter. Save that your wolves will be of your own making."

The words were not his.

That voice — where had that come from? that dark timbre, harsher, more strident than he had ever uttered — it scorched his throat, hot and metallic and utterly, completely unlike himself.

As quickly as it flared, it ebbed, washing through and over him like a bad fever breaking. He was shivering, unaccountably, in the warm, still air.

She was watching him the way one watches an adder within striking distance.

He sighed and wiped his dagger, slipping it back into his belt. "I have no desire for a quarrel, Alatáriel. You know I have ever valued your counsel and wisdom. But in this, I fear I must disagree. Eregion must be its own master, or it will perish. I had hoped to have an ally in you."

She said nothing.

There was nothing left to say.

He rose, leaving the remainder of the apple, uneaten, on the table. The white flesh, flayed-looking and raw, was already beginning to brown.

* * *

"They say you influence me overmuch."

Annatar, head and shoulders above him, braced the heels of his hands on Celebrimbor's bedwarm chest, and pressed upward as if flattening a sheaf of gold. "Do I?"

"I believe it was your suggestion to retire this eve when we had work yet to do," Celebrimbor murmured. Blue shadows of ribs showed beneath the spread of Annatar's hands, and his muscled, tawny body settled deep against the knifelike ridges of Celebrimbor's hips.

"Too weary?"

"Never." It was not quite true, but he twined a lock of hair between his fingers as it dangled over his face and tugged, imperious, until Annatar's mane curtained them in warm shadow.

Annatar ran a hand over Celebrimbor's worn cheek and rocked in small, coaxing circles, his black hair tumbling over his shoulder. The amber knot, Celebrimbor's gift, nodded against his throat. Sometimes his gaze, bright and dark as gemstones, would fall on Celebrimbor from above, and he would think of a crow over a stricken deer pecking tears from its eyes. But the strangeness passed.

"And here I thought you once immune to such earthly hungers as desire."

Annatar lifted his chin, withholding those besetting lips up-tilted in an arch smirk. "If you believe the Ainur and their retinue hungered for nothing more substantial than music, let me firmly disabuse you."

Celebrimbor scraped his hips upward. "Firm, indeed. However, I believe I require more convincing on the matter. The most enduring truths are only uncovered by repeated assessment, are they not?

Annatar laid a finger against his lips to silence him though he hardly had need for that glitter in his eyes held Celebrimbor bespelled and speechless. "You will not distract me with talk of absolutes, Telpëlamba. Now hush. Tonight of all nights, set aside your questions and labors. I have better uses in mind for that silver tongue of yours."

But it was Annatar in the end who descended, and Celebrimbor hummed in the back of his throat. His body, however weary, remembered the echo of kindling. He stroked that black hair, tried to concentrate on giving as well as receiving pleasure, but he found himself drifting. His head these days was full of wheels and glinting gems. They peered at him like eyes of fire through the dark.

A huff against his hip. "You are otherwhere."

"Hmm?"

Annatar folded his arms against Celebrimbor's breast and appraised him frankly. "Once upon a time, it would take me but a feather of a breath to have you buckling at the knees. Now this sad, little soldier sleeps at his post and even a raucous fanfare won't rouse him. You are distracted."

"I am a little overworked, perhaps."

"It is more than that." Annatar rolled to one side, propped his chin on a long hand. "She will have reached the other side of the Hithaeglir by now. Safe harbor amidst the other wildings content to remain in the past."

To his credit, the man did not sound sour (at least, not entirely so). If anything, a small, ironic smile lurked about his mouth.

"It is not that."

"No?"

Alatáriel had left the city, encircled by an entourage — 'entourage,' though they went armed, watchful and circling before even they reached the Gate as if they feared some treacherous stroke. He had not restrained her going; indeed, he had sent a missive (unbeknownst to Annatar, who viewed the entire situation with distaste and regret) to Narvi to foretell her coming and request passage for her and her daughter through his realm.

That had not stopped the whispers.

Some who had survived Nargothrond's fall remembered the going of Finrod and his ten companions. The doom of that fair city had been sealed by the lying tongue of a Fëanorian. Was Ost-in-Edhil, fairer and more inviolate even than that ancient realm, to suffer the same fate? For was it not whispered that Fëanor's blood now ruled in the place of the House of Finwë and dared to take its rightful lordship?

Uglier things, darker things he had heard too, even in the halls of the Mírdain. Things he did not dare speak of to Annatar. Things he dared hardly think himself and set just as soon aside.

"I am all attention." Hauling himself up, he straddled Annatar's golden body. "I swear it. Now. You said you had uses for this silver tongue of mine. Shall I wax lyrical on philosophy? Sing your praises? Or…?"

He closed his mouth and his hands around warm, hard flesh.

Like his craft, this, too, was something he could sink himself in utterly: the heat and languor of it…the striving for something just beyond reach…something that you could grasp if only you could endure the starts and stops, the inevitable challenges… because whatever discomfort there was in unfamiliarity, eventually, slowly, it blossomed and surged. He strained like a bellows — strength and air draining out of him to keep the fire lit. Though what fire and whose hands worked him he did not know.

There were rings again before his eyes. But these were grey, about his periphery, fluttering like tapers of ash in a high wind. His vision narrowed to the amber pendant in the hollow of Annatar's throat, a flaw at its center like a slitted, dark pupil. He brushed it, but the world was going — the rings of grey splintered into wings and beat themselves out inside his head.

He woke — or thought he woke — to a chilled feeling in the center of his chest. The sheets beneath him were damp and clammy, and the room was full of moonlight. The beeswax candles, disregarded and left to burn, had nearly guttered out, sunk in pools of their own making.

Annatar was sitting on the edge of the bed, the linens tangled about him, forearms resting on his knees. In the moonlight, he looked very much like a man instead of an emissary of the Valar. Troubled, folded in on himself.

Celebrimbor rolled to his side and soothed a hand over that chilly expanse. "What stirs you at this hour? Come. It is dark yet."

"The hour is late, indeed."

"There must be a few hours til dawn, surely."

"That's not what I mean." Annatar raised his head. "I have outstayed my welcome. You have heard the whispers, I am sure of it. What they say of you? Of me?"

Celebrimbor ceased trying to coax him back down into the warmth of the bed. His hand fell lifeless to the sheets as if cut from his arm. "I care not. Let the little people complain as they always do. What do they know?"

Annatar pressed his lips together, but it was a pale echo of his usual, sure grin. "If it were only the 'little people,' I might agree. But when the very men who walk these halls whisper that their master is mastered… when our 'friend' Narvi sends couriers skulking past our walls with missives to Lindon—"

"Narvi? What missives? What are you talking about?"

But Annatar was already rising, hunting out trousers, shirt, boots, belt. "Celeborn has more than a few loyals who remain with him. If they stir others to their cause, there will be insurrection. Bloodshed."

"Celeborn is a man of better sense than that."

"He has not his lady-wife and daughter to fear for now. That may make even an even temper hot — especially in a fighting man."

"I do not understand. What makes you talk so?"

Annatar pulled his black hair out of his collar and began to gather it up in a tail. "I am leaving."

Celebrimbor kneaded the sheets in his hands. He seemed incapable of moving, of thought. The linens still remembered their lusty disarrangement yet only cold disquiet seeped into him now.

"It is time and past time. In truth… I had not intended to remain as long as I did," Annatar's voice was soft and unspeakably gentle. "Surely you did not think I would remain forever."

"I-I confess I hadn't thought on it much."

"If I remain, it will cause trouble for you. Our time together was…pleasant…but it was destined to come to an end." He shook his head, once, and raked a hand through his hair. His eyes were all shadow.

Celebrimbor said nothing. The word 'pleasant' had knifed him, robbed him of the power to answer or argue or speak at all. His memory retreated to that rainy night in Ost-in-Edhil when he had staked what remained of his faith on a stranger in a burlap hood. For all they had shared throughout the years, all the subjects they had debated, all the theories they had put to the test, all the things they had caught in jewel and glass and metal — love had never been one of them.

True to his word, Celebrimbor never asked for or swore oath. Not aloud, anyway.

As ever, though, his lover plucked his thought from the air. He took a half step towards the bed, halted, and addressed the gilt adorning the far wall. "I do not love, Telperinquar Desire is as far as I may muster. But love is for the lesser children. I have…greater tasks that do not permit it."

And in that moment, Celebrimbor saw himself as Annatar must see him: a jewel, polished and bright, lovely and empty.

"When will you go?" His mouth was not his own; his lips numb and tingling no longer belonged to him. They shaped words without meaning or implication. There was a dull sort of knocking in his chest he knew would be pain, eventually, but for now, blessedly, he felt nothing but a vague sort of bemusement. As if he were in a dream of a dream. Or a nightmare of a dream.

Annatar stepped closer to the bed, leaned over him.

For just an instant, a flicker of an eyelid, the shadow on the wall behind his lover changed. Black and blasphemous, it groped along the wall, stretched from one end of the chamber to the other, with a terrible, unknowable reach. It swallowed the dying candles whole.

Lips brushed his brow, benediction and curse. A muting darkness filled his ears and eyes, and he plunged into a sleep, deep and dreamless as an abyss, and if other words were spoken, he never knew them.

* * *

Celebrimbor woke alone. The amber knot on its fine gold chain lay on the other pillow, chilled and abandoned.

He rose and attended those necessaries his position as nominal lord of Eregion demanded of him, and as soon as politics and politesse allowed (or a little before, truth be told), he shut himself up in his workroom and refused the curious, concerned and insistent alike.

But even here, in the realm where he had always felt his steadiest, the simplest of tasks refused their office. The kiln overheated and cracked an array of wax molds. Chisels broke. Light fractured and refused to be caught. It was as if absence had carved something out of him, some necessary element.

With a sweep of his arm, he cleared the table, relishing the rattle-clatter-shatter of breaking on the flagstones.

Long ago, he had become convinced a sickness infected his family tree — though where it began or what caused it he did not know; others speculated: a mother wearying of life; a father's desire for another wife; a son comforting himself with knowledge of jewels and oaths or when the sons of those sons darkened their sword-blades with kin's blood on white quays…But Celebrimbor suspected it was older than that. That, perhaps, even in the Time Before time… it had lain there, waiting.

Rooting in a cabinet, he thumbed the cork off a tall, brown bottle and tipped a few thick fingers of its contents into a glass. The juniper fumes hit him full in the face, obliterating the stench of charred wax and ruined gold.

Gone were the days of fig wine and starlight.

He toasted their end and drank until he no longer tasted misery or fumes.

Weaving between the wreckage of his instruments, he took up a post before the eastward facing windows. A dull, dark, soundless fog was crept steadily out of the lower vales and down the High Road, obscuring the wide loops up into the foothills and the realm of Dúrin's folk. The long grasses, bleached of all their colors, bent their blades beneath it.

Time passed only in the changing of the fog: pearl and opal struck with droplets of adamant, slowly dunned to shades of tourmaline then sank into a shade the color of bruise and heartbreak that had no name but absorbed all light into itself that no crystal could capture.

He would drift from time to time and wish for oblivion, but oblivion brought no relief, only a deeper void, and he would drag himself back into wakefulness only to seek darkness again.

Eventually, the fog reached the gate and came no further, hanging there, a wall of cloud about the city — the forerunner of dragon fire, he thought. So had it been in Nargothrond.

In a corner of the room stood a long, upright sheet of copper, polished clear as any glass. But it was all dark on the other side of the mirror. No lamps. No shadows, even. Or all shadows, perhaps.

He knew the face in that mirror.

It was not the one he desired.

It was not even his own.

His father gazed back at him, his expression — faced with his only offspring — riding between wonder and reproach.

"My lamp languishes for want of fuel," he told it in the grave tones of the inebriate. "But I find myself too parched to share. And you are dead."

The face in the mirror tilted at an imperious angle as if to dispute the truth of his words.

Their last words to one another had not been kind (if only words had been the only ways they had wounded one another).

"You ruined everything you touched. The blight comes from you — you and your bloody oath. Not me. You pursued those thrice-damned jewels whatever the cost. You slaughtered innocents. You cared nothing for the blood on your hands. I made one choice. One. Am I to be punished for—" He stopped.

The face in the mirror remained implacable, unmoved by either accusation or appeal.

"I was a man. Then a fool. Now a beast."

He laughed then, laughed until he had to sit down on the flags, laughed until he choked on tears.

When he could at last raise his face, the mirror was smooth and empty of anything but the room beyond it. He folded his arms around his knees. The ruby flickered on his forefinger.

_There is power to be forged out of pain. Harness it. Make something mightier from it. _

"Master of your own fate."

His mind was churning ahead, calibrating. Well-oiled and stripped of its usual armor, it could work unimpeded. The idea circled wildly like a bird under a roof; he had nearly grasped it when fire blossomed before his eyes like a match striking dried parchment and obliterated the room. If he had not already been sitting, he would have fallen.

A wasteland spread out about him. All naked stone and scorched earth. A lifeless, bloodless place and yet orderly. Without the riotous chaos of beauty or variation. The ring on his forefinger blazed, white-hot in an instant, a shackle around his finger and his will like the cage of an unrelenting lover's arms. The acrid sizzle of the small hairs on his knuckles reached his nostrils before he could summon the wherewithal to remove it.

As quickly as it had come, the heat faded. In its place crept a bone-deep chill, radiating from his chest and slipping icy fingers all the way down his spine. It banished the fog from his mind at last. Groping for the table edge, he pulled himself up.

The iron hasps gave him a little trouble, but he opened the chest after a little fumbling, hunted with his fingers through the detritus of years, of things half-forgotten, until they closed around a sleeve of silk. About the length of his forearm, the long, smooth cylinder lay in his hand, near weightless. The flute was all of Valinorean gold, untarnished despite all the years tucked away at the bottom of a damp chest. The gems about its mouth were his mother's, her words of clarity and sweetness bound into them. The metal had been worked and polished by his father in Tirion upon Túna in the days before the Darkness for a boy who had once fancied himself a minstrel.

Shrugging out of his finery, he fished out an old canvas shirt and pulled it over his head. Then he stoked the forge's coals alight and began to work.


	4. Chapter 4: Fire, Air, Water

Light filtered gradually through the fog, illuminating the wreckage of the night.

About him was the familiarity of chaos: a sweep of destruction across the floor. Broken lens, scattered papers, stubs of smoked-out candles and their ashes. A lamp still burned at his elbow though the angle of the sun glinting off the window (agonizing in its dazzle) had rendered it useless.

He scraped back his chair and rose, cautiously, on bloodless legs. With the faltering stub of the only remaining candle, he lit a shred left of sage to burn the juniper fumes and the remainder of the night out of his head.

On the worktable, aligned on a cloth, lay three golden rings. The facets of their jewels splintered the light through the windows, the dazzle of them almost painful and yet it was a sweet, wholesome pain.

Sapphire.

Ruby.

Adamant.

How strange. He looked at them as if they were the work of another for the shape of them, the angle of the shank, the polish and cut of the stones.

For a moment, his heart misgave him. But he lifted them up one by one, and it was only in the gazing on them, lifting one after another to adjudge their fit and angle and proper fitting, that he realized what they were for and what he would have to do next.

He gathered them up in one hand and made for the door.

There was no time to lose.

* * *

He dared not enter the Wood when at last he neared its eaves.

If the memories of the Eldar stretched long with the count of year, that of the trees stretched longer, beyond the count of time, beyond when the world lay quiet under a starlit sky and had known no touch of the Sun. The trees remembered their old dominion that had once crossed every mountain and spanned every stretch of land from West to East. Only since the destruction had their fiefdoms crumbled, and their fastnesses dwindled.

Some of the outliers that loomed above him now had the growth of a thousand years by the size of their boles and, as saplings, might have taken their first sips of life on the shadowy banks of the Esgalduin. Their forefathers had bounded the Girdle set in place by Melian. The whole of the air of the place tingled with ancient memory and enmity for any of Fëanor's brood, who had trespassed in their wood and dappled their roots with something rather thicker than water.

But the hour for diffidence was long past.

Time was slipping through his fingers and every moment lost was one that would not be regained.

He rode beneath the overhanging boughs, the sudden lift and clamor of the leaves announcing his coming like the blare of a hunting horn. A wind, despite the still branches, whipped across his canvas shirt.

Thee pulse in his neck beat in time with the silence. He tensed, waiting, very aware of his danger. He raised the hand not occupied with the reins of his mount, palm empty and outward in the (he hoped) universal gesture of harmlessness.

"I come as an ally to the people of Lórinand. I seek an audience with one who shelters here."

Silence.

He repeated himself often, wondering increasingly if he were only talking to the trees and if the notoriously wary folk of the land had somehow withdrawn deeper into their woods. Ahead of him, the glint of a river flashed between the boles of the trees, and he directed his mount thither.

Something struck him neatly between the shoulder blades and with enough force to unseat him. He landed hard enough to crush the breath from his lungs, and for a terrifying moment, he thought they had shot him after all. Then a boot heel planted itself firmly in the small of his back, pinning him against the ground as if between hammer and anvil.

Celebrimbor craned his head to one side, spat grit from his teeth, and rolled one eye upward in an effort to glimpse his captor. "I come as a friend, damn you."

"Bearing such bloody arms makes you no friend of ours."

The voice was male. His speech thick but intelligible. And he was not alone. Though Celebrimbor heard no step or voice, the subtle creak of bowstrings under tension was unmistakable to his keyed up senses.

"The wild is no place for the unarmed," he tried to explain. It was hard to negotiate with his face in the dirt. "I carry such only at need. I come on an errand of peace."

"I know your ilk well enough, kinslayer's get," growled the boot. Something wet and sharp stung the back of his neck and dripped down his collar. Then the boot lifted off him. "You will be taken to the king's judgment. He will determine what a traitor's life is worth."

Two sets of hands gripped his upper arms and hauled him up to his knees while another set bound a length of thin, strong, silver rope about his wrists.

"Cease this."

The silvern tone, soft but full of steel, gave the hands binding his wrists pause. A frisson went around the circle though whether wary or defiant was hard to tell.

"We have strict orders, Lady. The king—"

"The king, of all men, will grant me leave to deal with this matter myself. Now unhand him."

With grudging reluctance, the leader whose boot heel had imprinted itself on his lower spine, bent and split his bonds.

"Leave us."

No more hesitation now. Celebrimbor felt more than saw or heard the sentinels as they faded back to their posts even if one or two cast doubtful looks back.

After he was certain they had gone, he rose, cautiously, and rubbed his wrists where the cords had dug into his flesh. "I thought you might let them shoot me."

"If you think that of me, you know me not at all."

He looked at her as a man who had spent years crossing a desert might rest his eyes on an oasis. "You look well, Alatáriel."

She did not return the compliment. Even a lie for nicety's sake was beyond her. It was why he had come. He smiled inwardly.

"I wish our meeting were under better circumstances. My time is short, so I will be brief. Are we alone here?"

"We are alone." The ice in her expression thawed a little. "You look tired."

"Beyond all bearing." He sank under one of the silver-boled trees, rested his head back against its smooth skin. "The greatest secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves. Annatar — _Gorthaur _, I should say — I knew what he was. In some way. I knew...but I refused to believe it. I wanted the lie."

She came to sit beside him, tucked her bare feet under her, her skirts in the long grass. "You know that he will return. With force and might enough to take what he desires and sweep all away before him."

"Yes. That is why I have come. Before—" He stopped himself from saying 'before I die.' Too histrionic, that. "I have dispatched two of my most trusted messengers to Gil-galad. But this one… this one I needed to deliver myself."

The pouch he had cradled more closely than his weapon he now lifted from around his neck. Tipping its contents into his palm, he held up the ring, its white stone flashing green under the cloud of so many leaves. It burned with a pale fire. The White Gem, Adamant, strong and steely as a woman. It belonged here and knew it.

He looked at it, easier than meeting her eyes. "For a long time, I thought my father a cold, foolish, short-sighted man. Consumed with his pursuit whatever the cost to others — or even himself. I did not know that a man could come to evil by mistake or out of love. That one choice and willful blindness could lead you down a dark path from which there was no returning."

"It is never too late."

He smiled at her pale attempt to comfort him. "I have made many rings. But this one is different. Its power lies not in its facets, but in the heart and will of the wearer. Whatever else lies between us, Alatariel, I trust you with it. It is a burden. Make no mistake. Such things always are. But it will help with what's to come. I pray it goes a small way to settling our accounts."

She listened to all this without a word and stared at his outstretched hand. When she made no move to take it, his heart despaired.

"If I had known I was going to prattle on so, I would have brought refreshment."

Her fingers brushed his as they closed around the pouch. They were cool and slender and shaking ever-so-slightly. He had never seen any sign of vulnerability in her until she lifted her eyes to his face.

"Stay. Telperinquar."

How strange, he thought, the interstices of choice and circumstance, the offshoots of consequence. Once, he would have done anything for her to look on him like that. Now he only ached for what was gone. Ever had he sought to grasp that which had ever been withheld from him; yet in the end he desired, not the reward, but the reaching. The chaos and self-immolation of it.

"Thank you," he answered, meaning it. "I cannot. He will come to Eregion. I would be there. I pray, at the end, history will adjudge me kindly and remember my better deeds. I may be my father's son, but perhaps I will end better."

Suddenly, impulsively, he leaned forward, pressed a chaste kiss against her cool cheek. Then he stepped away.

* * *

The wood eased its grip on him, and the shadows fell away as he rode back into sunlight and the world that pulled Time on ahead of him, rushing and unrelenting and yet he no longer balked against its grasp.

He followed the line of the river, up towards the West Gate and home. If home it could be called now. At the confluence of Dwarf-road and river, he halted for a while.

His finger was swollen, and it took steady twisting to work the shank over the ridge of his knuckle. He laid it against the cool skin of the water and let it fall. Even now he could conjure gemstone eyes in black shadows of hair, the nearness of the stars to his hands, the sweet melding of order and chaos. Each needing and consuming the other. The ring rolled over, the ruby flashed once, a scarlet star in the murky depths.

Straightening, he turned his face to the sun sinking into the West in a riot of color. A band of fire smoked on the shoulders of the mountains while further up and back, pale greens and blues swam into a deepening twilight, finer and more timeless than any jewel, and a peace suffused him such as he had never known, as if some inner winter had withdrawn its claws from his soul.

_What price _, he thought as the light slipped away, _to touch such a star _?

**Chapter Notes: **

Esgalduin - a major tributary of the great river Sirion in Beleriand that divided Doriath in two

**End Notes: **

If you enjoyed this, I have written several loosely related stories of the First And Second Ages (listed chronologically below):

Be All My Sins Remembered - Finrod/Bëor

And All Our Wounds Forgiven - Finrod/Curufin

Against the Rising Tide - Elrond/Celebrimbor

From Ashes, Rise - Elrond/Glorfindel

Shadowlands - Elrond/Erestor


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